


The Long Road

by KendylGirl



Series: Dreams of Reality [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Commitment, Developing Relationship, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Oliver, Pining, Reunions, Separations, Travel, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-20 01:16:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14249910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KendylGirl/pseuds/KendylGirl
Summary: The summer after Rome, Elio and Oliver take a road trip.





	1. Day 3:  Somewhere in Catalonia

**Author's Note:**

> In the stream of my universe, this installment actually takes place before the first, "The Path of Water." I started later in the journey so that all can be assured of these two lovelies ending up where they always should be--with one another.
> 
> As before, I'm sure I'll get small details wrong, so I'll beg for your indulgence and kindness once more on that point!
> 
> Despite the references here, I am not a Fitzgerald hater; if you love him, please don't be offended!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Separating from Elio after their summer pushes Oliver to a crisis; he must make a choice.  
> He chooses wisely.

The tiny bells on the shop door jingle, and I glance up from the book I was examining to see Elio’s head duck inside. He slides a hand through his wind-swept hair and bids a quick “Buenos días,” to the owner, an old man behind the cash register who glowered incessantly and chewed on the end of an ancient cigar.“Turistes idiota i els seus Espanyols,” he grumbles, returning to the folded newspaper on the counter.

It is only our third day of traveling.The week after Elio’s graduation, we met in Barcelona to tour Catalonia and eventually take the long way back to B.On the whole, that is the extent of our plan; it is our gift to each other—every day, we’d find a new town, a new adventure, and experience it all together.We rented a green Fiat so small that I swore I could shut both doors at once if I sat over the gearshift, and we were off.Our only restriction would be the availability of petrol. 

The shop is tucked into an alley behind a bakery that serves the lightest lemon cream tarts I’d ever tasted. It apparently is a second-hand trade shop with an eclectic amalgamation of inventory, from the plastic Mickey Mouse gumball dispenser in the front window to a wall of classic jazz vinyl in the back.I’d poked at a non-functional Pac-Man pinball machine before discovering the pristine hardbound edition of _The Great Gatsby_ that I now cradled in my fingertips. 

Elio steps gingerly around a curio filled with glass figurines and shuffles over to me.He cranes his neck to read the book’s spine.His eyebrows raise.“Fitzgerald? Really?”

I nod and twist the volume around. “Amazing, isn’t it?This edition is from 1955. Gold-tipped pages. Binding still intact.I don’t think it’s ever been read.”

His lips quirk. “A thirty-year-old virgin?Nice.”

I grin and bump him playfully with my hip as he passes to look at a basket of stray marbles in front of a haphazard collection of silver spoons and ceramic plates.I glance over at him as he holds one of a handful of marbles aloft to the light, the cuffs of his white shirt crisp against the lean, tanned forearm.There were dustings of powdered sugar from the lemon tarts that had settled into the beds of his fingernails.I swallowed hard, feeling for a moment the warm weight of that hand on my thigh while I drive, tucked under my shorts, drawing feathery circles in my hair and making me shiver despite the unrelenting sun. I make a silent promise to myself to place every digit, one by one, into my mouth and scrub them clean with slow passes of my tongue, to hollow my cheeks and suckle them just hard enough to make Elio wilt and breathe out my name into the humid summer air.

I pick through the rest of the books while Elio pours over a map of the region from 1938.We try to bargain with the owner for our few purchases, but he merely shakes his head at every attempt.Finally, I shove about 3500 pesetas across the counter at him and sigh, “ _Suficiente_?”The old man shrugs and waves us out, impatient to be rid of our intrusion.

We wander aimlessly around the town, some seventy miles from Girona, deciding to climb the bell tower of the Catholic church to take in the countryside.For the effort of the hundreds of steps, we are treated to an unremarkable view of a nearby vineyard and the sparse playground of a small elementary school. I snort softly, “Not exactly To-Die-For, is it?”

He stifles a grin.“To-Wince-For, maybe?”

“Ummm…To-Snooze-For?”

With mock severity, Elio grabs my wrist and raises my arm up like a referee at the end of a prize fight, turning toward the distant vines to announce, "Tenemos un ganador!”His voice echoes off the stones of the square as he hisses to imitate a screaming crowd, and I sag forward with laughter.I reach around with my other hand and pinch his leg above his knee where I know he is ticklish, and soon we are a wriggling flurry of limbs, wrestling and giggling like kids. 

Eventually, we find a small cafe and plop down at a shaded table in its garden to order a couple of beers.Elio props his feet up in one of the empty chairs and runs his fingers up and down the neck of the beer bottle, drawing lines in the condensation.My eyes follow the movement, the way his lips pucker around it when he drinks, the lines of liquid that run down the column of his throat when he tilts his head back and swallows.

He is perfect.

“So tell me:the old map—why did you buy it?”

He gives me a lopsided smile that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.It is the smile he gives to me on mornings that we wake up entangled in one another, still tired and achy from the night before, but we just can’t bear to stop tasting, exploring, pressing into each other until we are lost.It is the smile that he gets when he studies my face, tracing its lines with his eyes and his fingertips and his lips in a deliberate circuit that leaves me wobbly and makes me want to fall into him like a tropical pool, to immerse myself totally in the amber flecks of his eyes.

“I love maps like that—the history of them, that’s interesting—but I think what I like most is the idea that they offer a clear plan—all laid out in print, you know?—that no one can follow.The roads that they thought would be there forever, the landmarks and the borders, so much so that they put them down in print, don’t even exist anymore.”

“So it’s a plan that shows how nothing can be planned?”

His smile widens, showing the white tips of his teeth.“Sort of, yeah.”He tilts his head back to rest it against the chair.“Not the good stuff, anyway.”

“Do you have any idea how wise you are?”

“Yep, sure do.”He smirks.He thinks I’m joking.

“I’m serious." 

He flaps a languid hand in the air.“You know, professor’s son—blah, blah.”

“Well, I’ve met plenty of professors’ sons.I’ve never met anyone like you.”

The smile again.He’s killing me.I shove my pinky into a jagged edge of the wrought iron table to keep from knocking it aside with one giant sweep of my arm and pulling him into my lap.

I raise my bottle to him.“Drink up.We really need to find a place to stay for the night.”

 

* * *

 

Four months.

That’s all I could take.I couldn’t have lasted another moment without him.

I left Rome at the end of our summer with a hole stabbed in my heart, but I had grit my teeth through the pain.I had obligations, responsibilities.I hadn’t a choice in the matter—I _had_ to go back.The new semester was starting in a couple of weeks and there was no time to make other arrangements.

And did I even want to?I’d only known Elio for a summer—no, for _part_ of a summer, a fraction of one—and I was unwilling to trust that with the rest of my life.I know myself.I know how I get caught up in the stories that I read, the winding vines of a drama and romance in which I wrap myself to choke out the reality around me.It had been my pattern since youth.I had lived through fiction and history.It filled my soul to the point that I swore I saw frescos in the masonry of the subway and a Juliet on every balcony.A living paradox was my subsistence, the dreams of my fiction used to make my waking life feel tolerable and real.

Could it have been that this whole affair merely an extension of that?Had I, in desperation, convinced myself that it was real?Had I simply cast myself in the role of a lifetime, one in which a chance meeting, a summer fling, becomes the foundation for a life, the missing key that unlocks the rusted tumblers of a temperate heart and floods it with joy and heat and fresh blood, forcing it to beat again?It made me blush to think like this: foolish, fanciful Oliver who believes in happiness on a cosmic scale, who thinks that love is real and that Fate actually allowed him to happen upon his soulmate early in his life so that he might experience the miracle of it in earnest, or dared to hope that such an occurrence might exist at all.

I spent the long flight back to New York trying to block out the smell of Elio’s skin and the feel of the hair at the nape of his neck.I reminded myself of how hard I’d worked to get where I was, how I owed it to myself and my book and the university to make the most of the opportunities that I had been granted, ones I had earned through determination and a dedication to scholarship.I rehearsed my first lecture in my mind and edited the syllabus and ignored the sharp pain in the back of my throat when I would blink and see Elio’s face disappearing in the distance as the train drug me away without him and left my entrails behind as tracks.

A dark part of me also insisted that Elio deserved better.He is good, so much better than me that it seemed unfair to shackle him with a pathetic dreamer who feared his waking life.I should want him to find his own bliss, to walk proudly and unencumbered, and not selfishly cling to him like a drowning man, pulling him under the water to drown along with me, a sorry thank you for the life he’d breathed back into me, for reaching into my chest and pulling me back from oblivion.How much more could I take from him before he would resent me?I imagined the moment it would occur to him that I was not worth his time, that I was a sham in brightly colored swimming trunks, that he would like nothing better than to rewind his life and start over at seventeen before I came into his home and stole his future away before he even got a chance to glimpse it.

The habits of a vicarious life are difficult to break.

I called when I got back to my apartment, and I almost wished I hadn’t.The professor and Annella were warm and jovial, as always, but when they clicked off and Elio sighed into the phone, the static and the catch in his voice, the weight of the distance between us, nearly crumpled me. _I don’t want to lose you_.I ached to say his name, to call him by mine, but I didn’t.I hung up the phone and sat alone on my bed, hugging my knees tight to my chest, and tried not to feel the spray of the sea or a kiss to my neck and the soft hair tickling my cheek.

We wrote to each other regularly.I called once a week, though these talks ended up with more and more extended silences than conversation.The last time I tried to reach him, the professor told me very gently that Elio was not home.

As the weeks turned into months, I thought I was managing it.I was busy with grading and classes, meetings with the department and a couple of signings for my book.Then, a colleague, an older professor with a silver goatee, invited me for a drink.We both happened to be in our offices late after the Thanksgiving break, and he popped his head through my open door and announced that he just couldn’t take one more dissection of Daisy Buchanan as a revamped female archetype of the modern superwoman.

I laughed and gratefully accepted his invitation.We sat on stools at a bar down the street and ordered scotch. 

“Daisy Buchanan, huh?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled.“You a Fitzgerald fan?”

I winced.“Not particularly.”

He clinked his glass with mine.“Good.He’s a slow learner, that one.”I laughed, and he said, “Poor bastard tried to substitute money for love in every story he ever wrote, and they all ended for shit.You’d have thought he’d have learned not to do it in his real life.”

I swallowed that down, along with a gulp of scotch.

“So, how are you enjoying Columbia?”

“Good.Great.”I nodded and smiled at him. 

He stroked his beard.“You sure?”

“Of course!Why do you ask?”

“Forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, Oliver, but I’m an old man, and we tend to do things like that.”He took a sip of his scotch.“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re depressed.”

I shrugged.“Just anxious, I guess.Trying to make a good impression, feel the place out.You know how it is.”

He watched me quietly for a moment.“Sure, I see that—again, forgive me if this is too forward—but I really don’t think that’s it.”

I could feel my cheeks redden.I told myself it was the booze.“Why?”

“Because every week you seem to sink a bit further.You’re a young man, Oliver, and that sharpness you showed at the beginning of the semester…well, this week you drug into the office looking older than I do.”

I couldn’t deny it.He wasn’t wrong.“Too many late nights, I suppose,” I offered lamely.

He didn’t answer.He motioned to the bartender for another round.

We chatted some about my book, and he was very complimentary.I knew that he was humoring me; he’d had half a dozen volumes published over the course of his career, but he never felt the need to mention that to me.I suppose that is how one behaves when he is comfortable with himself.

Finally, I sighed and looked at him over the rim of my glass.“What do you think it means when you miss someone _more_ as time passes, and not less?When the pain keeps getting worse instead of better?”

“What do _you_ think it means?” he returned evenly.

It was then I saw my error.I was worse than Fitzgerald.So enamored was I with the fictions I had read and created in my head that I assumed my real life could never touch them.Real life would forever be taxes and traffic jams and deadlines.Thus, when real life eclipsed the art, I assumed it was false—it _had_ to be because it was better, far more wondrous than I’d ever believed it could be.I loved it, so it had to be fake and ephemeral. 

My whole life before Elio had been a search for meaning.Then, I found it.I had actually _found_ it.But because I had seen the whole as an epic quest, a hero’s journey that would involve a lifetime of lonely wandering and solitary meditation, I never truly believed that search would be— _could_ be—successful.Those stories never have a resolution, do they?The prize is the experience, not a tangible object at the end.No one ever finds the holy grail or the pot of gold; rather, they die with their arms outstretched to a green light on a dock across the bay.   All they have are the metaphors, figurative joys that idiots cling to when they’ve nothing else in their arms.

But Elio was real.His soft cheek and his pliant skin and his sharp mind were real.He was exactly what I needed exactly when I needed him, so I had written him off as a mirage, and I’d done so with such consistency that he was fading away.I was losing him.

“It means I am a fucking imbecile.”

He smiled broadly and clapped me on the shoulder.“According to my wife, we all are.”

 

* * *

 

 

That night I called Samuel. 

“ _Come va, Americano_?” he greeted me warmly.“How is life abroad?”

“I’m hurting, Pro.”

“Yes? _Perché_?Why is that?”

“I need to talk to you about something.I’m not sure that you’re going to like it.”

“Ah.”His voice had deepened.“I knew that what lay ahead for you and Elio was going to be difficult.I knew that you two had much to work out between you.”

My hand started to sweat on the receiver.I don’t know why I was surprised.Samuel is no fool.Of course he knew.“I—I think I—“ _Oh, out with it, you moron._ “I’ve worked out my end, Pro.I want to come visit at the winter break.I need to know from him…well, I just need to _know_.”My voice was strangled.I heard the desperation in it, but there was no sense in hiding it now.

“You are welcome here, Oliver.We have raised our son to be his own man, to make his own decisions.Come and ask him all of the questions that need to be answered.”

I released a breath I didn’t know I was holding.“Thank you, Pro.You’re the best.”What would it have been like to grow up under the roof of such a man?   After a conversation like this, my father would have locked me in a tower or sent me to a correctional facility.“Elio is a very lucky man, you know.”

“How funny,” he responded thoughtfully, “that’s exactly what I was going to say.”

 

We didn’t tell Elio that I was coming.  I asked Samuel not to; I claimed that I wanted to surprise him.Really, though, I was afraid he would make plans to be elsewhere if he knew, that he would have the time to work up a whole speech to explain why his life was better without me in it.Surprise felt like a tactic of war to gain some kind of an advantage.I hoped it was enough.

I arrived in the late afternoon when Elio was napping.Mafalda patted my cheek and told me sternly that I was too skinny.The Perlmans gave me strong hugs and sent me up the stairs.I ascended slowly, my gut churning.I felt like J. Alfred Prufrock entering a tea party.I knew I would die if Elio looked at me with pity and uttered any version of ‘That is not what I meant at all.’

I eased open the door to my room— _his_ room—and the creaking of the hinges made him twitch.I padded over and sat on the edge of the mattress.I breathed in deeply several times, taking in as much of the smell of the place, its comfort and ambiance.It occurred to me then how much it felt like home here, far more than an apartment in New York or a ranch in Connecticut.I wondered what that meant.

Elio stirred, blinking awake.“Oliver?”He looked at me hazily, as if he were unsure if I were some kind of delusion, a waking dream.I smiled.Just seeing him inches in front of me, mussed hair sticking at all angles, warm and soft and beautiful—I wanted to scoop him up in a bearhug or burrow under the covers with him and hide my face, turn it into his chest and listen to the thud of his heart.

“Hi.”It’s all I could get out.My throat was dry as tinder.

Suddenly he sat upright and pushed himself away until his back was against the headboard.His eyes were wide.“What are you doing here?”

My fingers twisted into my pant leg.“I’m sorry.I’m so sorry.I—I didn’t want to—startle you or to upset you.I—I just had to tell you this in person.”Elio said nothing, merely pulled up his legs, away from me and into himself.I pressed on.“I tried, Elio, I really did.I tried very hard to function on my own, to keep my distance, to give you the space you needed.”I wiped my nose.“I don’t know if it is all right to say this now, but I can’t…you need to know the truth.”I looked up, directly into his eyes.“I love you, Elio.In all the world, that is the only thing I know for certain.I _love_ you.You are the only part of my life that makes sense.Nothing feels real until I tell you; nothing I do has any meaning unless I’m doing it with you.I went back to America in August, but that’s not home anymore. _Home_ is wherever you are, and I don’t want you to question that or have any doubts about what you mean to me.”I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.“And I have to tell you that if you don’t feel the same, if you’re unsure, it’s all right.You can tell me.This isn’t an _obligation_ for you.It’s just…it’s just a confession.Please just tell me honestly what you want and what you feel.”

I dared to look up again. Elio’s face was frozen, his hands clinging to the bedsheet like it was a shield.I wanted to crawl into a hole.I turned my head away so I wouldn’t have to watch his emotions filter from shock to disgust to pity.I stood up and walked toward the balcony, looking out over the snow-dusted landscape, at once foreign and achingly familiar.

There was a small voice behind me.“Are you serious?”I heard a choked sob, and I spun around.Elio’s face was in his hands, fingers gripping his face tight.

I lunged at him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders.“My God, Elio, no!It’s all right.I’m sorry, I’m sorry.Please!Please don’t cry, please don’t cry…”

I’m not sure I have ever hated myself more than at that moment.

He clutched at my shoulders and pushed me back.There was a watery smile on his face.I blinked.I didn’t know what to do.I didn’t know what this meant.I plunked down on the mattress next to him.“Elio?”

Elio surged up and knocked me flat on my back.He sat on my chest, hands on either side of my head.“God damn it, Oliver!I thought you showed up here to break up with me, you son of a bitch!”He dove at my mouth, biting at my lips and pulling my hair.“I fucking love you, Oliver.It split me in two when you left me because you are more myself than I am.So don’t you _ever_ do that to me again,” he panted.“Do you hear me? _Never again!_ ”

I crushed him against me, tears spilling unchecked from the corners of my eyes.I felt dizzy, giddy and drunk, and I folded all of my limbs around him like a June bug to seal his body to mine, to snuff out the miles that had separated us and the misunderstandings that seem to evolve from nothing when distance and silence fills in the gaps left by touch and talk.

We missed dinner that night.

When we came down for breakfast the next morning, the Perlmans acted as if I’d never left.My place was set at the table, and as I chiseled open my boiled egg, Annella squeezed Elio’s hand and murmured, “Now our family is complete.”

 

* * *

 

 

We find a bed and breakfast on the edge of the town.We drop our purchases on the small table, and I flop onto the bed, face down.The afternoon sun had sapped our energy, and the room is wonderfully cool and dim.I move back and sit up against the frame, and Elio climbs into the V of my legs and leans back against my chest.I wrap my arms around him and grip my hands together over his stomach.I run my nose through his hair and kiss his neck, licking the salt from the inside of his collar.

He sighs and melts further against me.“Want to head back toward the water tomorrow?Follow the coast a bit?”His voice sounds lazy.Contented.

“Works for me.You’ll never have to try hard to convince me to stare at the Mediterranean for hours on end.”

We chatted more, how long before we’d work our way around the arc of the sea to arrive back in B., how long we’d have with his parents before we’d depart for the States to set him up at my place in New York before he’d migrate the short distance to Princeton in the fall. 

After a while, Elio is quiet for so long, I wonder if he’s fallen asleep.

“I thought you hated him,” he murmurs.

“Hmmm?”

“Fitzgerald. Thought you found him ‘tiresome and deliberately obtuse.’”

I shake my head slightly and chuckle. Leave it to Elio to remember an exact phrase from a snippet of offhanded conversation had in a bookstore a year before. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

He hums and yawns.“I suppose.I mean, who decided that a love story has to end tragically in order for it to have meaning, right?

I adjust my shoulders to better cradle his head and kiss his jaw.

“So why did you buy the book?”

I tighten my grip on his waist and tuck my feet under his legs.“To remind myself of how close to death I came.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot has long been the frame that I see Oliver embodying to some degree. Prufrock could never manage to approach the girl that he wants, and Oliver (in the original) cannot manage to open himself to the man he wants. I don't want him to end that way, though. He deserves better!
> 
> The boys travel from Barcelona as a call-back to Part 1, to give Oliver the time in Catalonia that he'd been denied as a teenager.
> 
> My Catalan shopkeeper mutters about the "idiot tourists and their Spanish"; I'm relying on third-hand translation for that, so I hope I got his words somewhat correct.


	2. Day 6:  Costa Brava

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At another stop on their road trip, Oliver's persistent fears get the better of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone up for some jealous Oliver??

It starts as nothing, a mere suggestion, an idea.

We had arrived that morning in the region of Costa Brava and had spent most of the day climbing the rocks of one of the natural parks.It seemed, though, that I really had spent the day chasing after Elio, who leapt from surface to surface with the grace of a ballerino.While I had lumbered behind, old Converse slipping on the smoothed planes of the boulders, he moved tirelessly like a winged phantom.

Halfway up one of the bluffs, I have to stop, doubled over with my hands resting atop my knees.

“Hey!” I call up to him.“You want to wait a minute maybe?”

Elio, nearly to the peak of the mountain, pauses and turns toward me in a perfect pirouette.“What’s the matter?”

I glower back.“Oh, nothing.Just a little oxygen deprivation, but who needs air?Forget it.I’ll be fine.Nothing you need to worry about.” 

He grins and scampers back down to me.He flaps his hand back and forth over the back of my neck.“Here you go, old man.Let me cool you off.”

“ _Old man_?”I snap upright, grabbing him around the waist and tossing him over my shoulder.He yelps and claws at the shirt on my back, pulling it up.“You want to re-evaluate that, Mr. Perlman?”I leverage his legs under my forearm. dipping him lower, almost vertical to the ground.“Well?Anything to say?”I hear him giggling, and I run my fingers up and down the ticklish skin at the back of his leg until he is shrieking and begging me to stop.“Ready to recant?”

I hear him gasp out, “Almost,” before he grabs the waistband of my shorts and yanks them up hard until I am certain they are going to have to be surgically removed from my crotch.I crank my arm down and lower him to the ground in front of me.His eyes twinkle, face flushed, hair falling rakishly over one eye.

_God, help me_.

“You know, you might want to watch where you choose to cut off my blood supply.Might put a damper on the evening’s activities.”I fight to keep my face stern.

His eyes widened comically, and I hold his gaze as he reaches forward slowly, slides his hand up each thigh, and works his fingers around them, separating the fabric from my skin.“Better now?” he coos, lips pursed.

“No.”

His head tilts, eyebrows coming together uncertainly.“What?Why?”

“Because now,” I angle forward, pressing my hips against him pointedly, “too _much_ blood.”

His fingertips ghost over the front of my shorts.“Oh,” he breathes softly.

I lean down and put my mouth to his ear.“Know what this means, Elio?”I slip my tongue into his ear canal and exhale as if trying to fog a glass, then move my lips around its shell, lapping up the lobe.

I heard him whimper and shiver deliciously, drifting forward and easing up on his toes to push against my mouth.“Wh-whaat?”

“It means…you’d better run.”I twist away and leap off the rock, hopping over the next few before I hear an indignant, “Hey!” and the scratch of rubber against the granite as Elio scrambles after me.

We reach the summit at the same time and flop down on the rock to recover.The sun is high and strong by that time, glittering off the water below in a dizzying shimmer.I lie down flat, letting Elio partially block the intense rays while I relax, forearm flung over my eyes.I always love how my other senses can take over once my eyes are closed.It’s as if my mind had just been waiting for the opportunity to stretch, like a vampire rising from its coffin as soon as night falls.Immediately, I hear the scratch of gnarled branches and the creak of the trunks as they scrape together on the cliff, the cry of a gull as it swoops overhead.I inhale, and my nose revels in its new power, presses images and colors behind my closed lids:the salt air, a touch of lavender and pine from the surrounding woods.The musky sweat and soft detergent wafting from Elio’s shirt.

I reach out blindly with my other hand and tuck it under his shirt, just to touch him, just to feel the sweat-slicked skin over the knobs of his spine, enveloping the pads of my fingers like warm silk.

He sighs, and I can feel his muscles twist as he turns toward me.“Man, I could really use a shower.”

I smile to myself.I would love it if Elio never showered.I love the smell of his armpits and his groin when they are full of his scent, the rich tang that is his very own.I love to rub my face in his dark, thick hair and cover myself in that scent, mark myself as his, carry him with me in the pores of my skin and the lining of my nostrils.The smell of Elio is a nectar that I could marinate in until I pickle, drunk on his perfect aroma until I no longer have need for my eyes again.

“All right,” I sigh.“We passed a place on the way in that seemed perfect.Let’s check it out.”

 

 

We amble up the drive of a property that is more of an artifact than a hotel.It had once been a medieval castle, complete with rough-hewn stone and spires concealing shaded garden alcoves and dribbling pools.Elio charms the desk clerk, asking questions about the tapestry that hangs inside the lobby, a period piece flanked by pieces of armor and crossing swords.He manages to get us a room that overlooks the bluff leading to the sea, and we can hear the soothing hiss of sea spray at regular intervals from the small balcony.

While Elio retires to the bathroom, I recline on the small bench outside the sliding glass door with my feet up on the railing, imagining the slick and soapy planes of his skin, too slippery to grasp firmly in my hands.Elusive.Like maybe they're not meant to be held, confined.Trapped.And in that moment it struck me that, just maybe, I wasn’t really meant to, as if Elio cleansing himself were really Elio freeing himself of what is stale and constricting and old.

_Old man_.

Did he really think that of me, even a little?Was he slightly embarrassed, not even of my gender—his open upbringing had spared him from that particular mental torture—but of my age?Seven years is by no means a lifetime.Were he forty and I forty-seven, no one would blink at the difference; but those years seem so much more expansive at our stage of life, a time when men grow in leaps, not mere steps, when progress is exponential and not accomplished by simple addition.

I’d always thought of us growing together, but maybe he feels that I am holding him back, like I’ll always be down the hill yelling at him to move slower, to wait longer, to keep him off the summit that I couldn’t reach on my own.

I run my fingers along my hairline, wiping away the sweat that had gathered there.

The shower clicks off, and a few minutes later Elio emerges in a pair of stone-washed jeans that cling to his narrow hips, rubbing his wet hair with a towel.He leans against the railing facing me, bare feet curling around the bench seat on either side of my legs.“You getting hungry?This place has to have killer seafood.Boiled sea bass?Oh, Anchise would be drooling.”He grins and tosses the towel at me.

I catch it with one hand.

“Elio, when we go back to New York, have you…well, are you sure you want to live with me?”

The smile evaporates from his face.“What?”He swallows audibly.“What do you mean?Where’s this coming from?”

I sit up a little straighter and twist the towel in my grip.“No place.I—I just—I mean, it’s just an idea, because…because if you don’t really _want_ to live with me, if you’d rather find new friends, have a college roommate and all that, then…you know, I understand, that’s all.”

His feet drop to the ground, and as he stands, his arms cross in front of his bare chest.“Really? Because what it sounds like is _you_ don’t really want to.”

“Elio…”

“You’re unbelievable!”A flush had overtaken his skin, his eyes flashing with anger.“What, are you bored with me already, Oliver?Is that it?Trying to find a way to shake me loose before you’re stuck with me like gum on the bottom of your shoe?”

“What?No, Elio, of course not!Come on…”I reach out for his hand, and he jerks away.

“Leave me alone, you traitor,” he intones coldly, pushing past me into the room.I rub my face with my hand in frustration and hear him moving around inside, slamming his bag onto a table and ripping the zipper open.By the time I come in from the balcony, he is fully dressed in a white and purple striped button-down and is sliding on his shoes.

“Where are you going?”

He huffs, barely glancing at me, “What do you care?”He snatches a key from the table and slams the door behind him.

I flop onto the bed and kick it hard. _Fuck_.I grip at my hair and stare blankly at the wooden beams of the ceiling.What in _the hell_ just happened?

 

I wait an hour. 

One agonizing hour with the bedspread bunched awkwardly under my back, listening to the wind blow outside, the tinkling of glasses and surges of talk and laughter filtering up from the courtyard nearby, the consequence of couples bending conspiratorially over small tables lit by candlelight, exchanging stories and sharing small touches while the wine and the perfumed air work through them.

When Elio doesn’t return, I clean up and go in search of him.He isn’t anywhere on the grounds; I search the lobby, the small restaurant, the library, and every small cubby I can find where he might possibly be.

_ No Elio. _

Those words resonate inside my skull, awakening that dull ache in my chest, the hole that had opened there after Rome, the one that had consumed me slowly as I’d withered to a shell until we were finally reunited in B. 

Suddenly, my skin was crawling.I purse my lips tight—I might hyperventilate.I need to find him _now_.I need to explain.He needs to understand.

In desperation, I follow the road outside the hotel.The sun is setting behind me, and the sky is lit in a perfect deep orange, streaked with pinks, settling in an indigo at the apex of the sky.Its beauty should comfort me, but instead, it deepens my odd sense of panic, like I am late, that I’m running out of time.I am an hourglass whose sand is nearly spent. 

Down the hill is a small seaside bar, clapboard wood and fish netting decorating the outside, and it makes me feel like I’m really on the coast of Maine, not Spain.It is called Castaway. 

How appropriate.

The small lot is nearly full, as is the patio that extends around the exterior with small umbrellaed tables and a makeshift outdoor bar made of bamboo.Dance music flows out into the dense air.I cross the small wooden bridge over a trickling grotto and push open the screened door.

I see him almost immediately.

He is under the colored lights of the dance floor on the fringes of a small group who shake and churn to the pulsing beat.I hover in the doorway, for as desperate as I was to find him, now that I have, I don’t know what to do or what to say.What if he’s still angry?Maybe he will shove me away and spit in my face, draw the stares of the entire restaurant as he dresses me down to my loafers about what a worthless piece of shit I am.Or worse, what if he is indifferent?What if he smirks and turns away, discards me, floundering and forgotten, on the edge of the parquet tiles?

I move along the wall and sit at a small table.A waitress with a heavy wrap of silver hair drifts past.“Algo?”

“Cerveza, por favor.”

Elio’s eyes are closed.He moves in a fluid zigzag wave, a heel-to-toe motion, one hand flat against his chest.The fringes of his hair are still damp.I stare at him while he moves effortlessly around the space in perfect time to the upbeat rise and fall of the song that’s playing.It is not one I recognize.

“Hermoso, no?”

The waitress materializes beside me and plunks my beer bottle down on the table.She crooks her head toward the dance floor and winks.

I’m grateful that the dark room conceals my blush.“Sí.”

I take a quick sip of my beer, hoping she’ll leave me in peace.She watches the dancers for a moment while accepting my payment for the beverage and adjusting the small apron around her thick waist.Then, she grunts, “Ese hombre—he thinks it is so, yes?”She clucks her tongue.

My head snaps back to Elio.A man has sidled up to him, head bobbing to the rhythm.He shakes his hips at Elio, the cream-colored trousers that the man wears low on his hips undulating against him.He circles around Elio’s corner of the floor.I can see the man’s thin lips moving, chatting up Elio with gusto, lips curved up in a lascivious smirk, petting the small mustache that looks like almost like a welcome mat tattooed to his face.Elio tilts his head to hear him, then smiles politely and says a few words back.

My veins fill with cold fire.

The man tips his head and speaks, perhaps asking a question, slicked-back hair tucking under Elio’s fluff of curls.He lays his hand on Elio’s shoulder and laughs.

My lips feel numb.There is a small dot in my subconscious screaming at me to relax, but the monster in my head tells it to fuck off.I grip my beer bottle so tight the label warps.Then, my stomach turns to water as the music abruptly changes, morphing from the bubbly to the sensual.Elio’s motion slows uncertainly, and the man takes the opportunity to hook a finger into Elio’s belt loop to pull him flush against his billowy cotton slacks

I down my beer in one long draught and stand up.My joints feel stiff and mechanical, and my vision is tunneled.It takes just three strides to cross the room.Elio glances up and sees me approaching, his initial look of relief growing strained when he gets a better look at my face as I step under the colored lights that circle over the dance area.I have no idea what expression rests there, but it clearly hasn’t alarmed the other man, who barely spares me a flick of his eyes before turning into Elio and trying to snuggle his face against Elio’s neck.

Elio stiffens and tries to step back, motioning at me, “Louis, c’est mon ami, Oliver.”

“Hello, Louis.”My voice sounds dark and turbulent, and the greeting comes out like an insult.

Louis twists his head toward me.“ _Va t’en, espèce d’idiot_ go away, you idiot,” he sneers.“ _Il est à moi_  this one is mine.You find your own, yeah?”His French accent is heavy, made more so by whatever alcohol he’s ingested throughout the day.

I’ve always hated being tall.It means that I stand out everywhere, which most people of average height would likely consider a delight.But for a shy man who has wanted nothing more than to disappear in most crowds, who has never wanted to draw the stares that judge me for the black sheep that I know I am, it has been a curse.Most often, I fight not to curve my shoulders, to slouch as a weak attempt to shrink down to a level that most would consider reasonable and acceptable.Normal.

But at this moment, I gladly use every centimeter to my advantage.I straighten my spine to its full length and take a deliberate step forward to properly angle my face down, inches from Louis’s nose.“Really?” _Si j’étais toi, je le repenserais_ I’d rethink that if I were you.”

Vaguely, I can feel Elio’s hand on my back and hear his, “It’s all right, Oliver,” somewhere distant, a whisper below the boiling rush of blood in my ears.

When Elio tries to come around to my side, Louis jerks him back with the finger that is still fixed around his belt loop of Elio’s jeans.“Where you go, sweet thing? I show you good time, yes?” Louis purrs.

My jaw clenches, and my hand falls on Louis’s forearm.I grip it like a vice.My voice is barely above a whisper.“You are not fit to breathe his air, you cretin.You will let him go.Right.  Now.”Louis’s face gradually pinches and his mouth contorts.I tighten my hand continuously, mercilessly, wondering at one point if I could possibly break his radius or ulna.Or both.I feel a zip of exhilaration when I realize that I don’t care.If he doesn’t get his slimy paws away from Elio, I fear I could rip his trachea from his neck and string him up with it to twirl like the mirror ball that hangs from Castaway’s eaves.

At last he relents, fingers straightening, and when I finally feel Elio against me, hooking his arm around my waist, I shove Louis back and let him go.He massages his arm and mutters something that sounds like, “Fucking Américains,” and staggers off toward the bar.

“Holy shit, Oliver.I thought you were going to kill him!”

My breathing starts to slow, and I turn to look at Elio.His eyes are dark and wondering, his mouth slightly ajar.I pivot my body and let my arms fall around his waist, sweeping him into a slow sway to the music that has kept its sultry pulse.“He was touching you,” I murmur, clenching my hands tighter, massaging his lower back.“I didn’t like it.”

He shakes his head.“We were just dancing, you know.”

“I know.”My eyes bore into his.“I didn’t like it.”

Elio’s gaze drops to my mouth.“Oh.”He reaches up and hooks his arms around my neck.“Good.”

I huff a laugh and bend to smell his hair, his skin, a deep cleansing breath that rids my muscles of the vestiges of the concrete that had filled them.We stay like that, quiet and connected, moving as one until the music picks back up and the crowd cheers at the new song, a local favorite.I brush my thumb across Elio’s cheek.“Come on, can we talk for a minute?”

He follows me back to my small table in the corner.I turn my chair toward his so that our knees are touching.“Elio, earlier was a mistake, a misunderstanding.You have to know that.”

He shrugs, “I figured, once I cooled down, but…” He trails off and leans back heavily in his chair.

“No, no, it was, that’s all it was.It was completely my inability to…to express myself like a semi-intelligent human.”I lean forward and grab both of his hands, my elbows on my knees, making me look up to hold his gaze.“I love you, Elio.I _really_ love you, and I know that’s true because I love you so much that I would actually…I’d let you leave me if it is what you wanted, and I’d always thought that kind of sentiment was just a pop culture cliché, but it’s not.I was wrong, so wrong…”I squeeze his hands tighter.“I don’t want you to feel smothered, and if you want freedom, it’s yours.”

“I don’t need freedom, Oliver.You’ve _given_ me freedom.Being with you has made me free.”His voice is steady and sure.

I chuckle suddenly.“God, you don’t even realize it, do you?”

“What, exactly?”

I quirk my head.“How much you really _do_ know about the things that matter.”

A ghost of a smile.“I’m a fast learner.”

It makes me cringe.“You are, you really are, and I am just so afraid that…that…”

Elio bends closer.“Why are you so afraid?”

It is a legitimate question, a simple one.I guess the answer is relatively simple, too:“I’ve never had anything as precious as you.”I shrug minutely.“I am completely unremarkable, and you are divine in every way.” _Go on—say it._ “And I think you deserve something better than me.”I force myself to hold his eyes, not to hide.“I am not enough.”

Elio winces at my words and exhales forcefully, as if releasing them from his body as fast as they’d entered.He changes the position of our hands so that it is he who holds mine tightly.“Don’t say that, Oliver.Don’t _ever_ say that.You are everything to me.I _worship_ you, Oliver.”

I can feel tears prickle behind my eyes.“You shouldn’t.I’ll let you down.”

He gives me that smile, _our_ smile, and nods.“Maybe.Sometimes.But I’ve heard that ‘big results require big ambitions.’Isn’t that right?”

I swallow thickly and shake my head in amazement.“See what I mean?Who else could quote Greek philosophy to me and manage to make it the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard?”

He smirks.“Oh, please.You just love Heraclitus.”

My face flushes, and I scoot forward so that my knee pushes between his thighs.I stretch my torso to get as close as possible to whisper,“I’ve studied Heraclitus for years.Never turned me hard as a rock until now.”

I see the pulse point in Elio’s neck start to flutter.“Yeah?”

My nose traces the line of his jaw.“Yeah.”

“Oliver?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we go back to the room now?”

I smile wide and lick my lips.“You sure?”

His eyes are as dark as his hair.He’s watching my mouth again, and he shifts subtly in his seat.“Yeah,” he breathes.

I blink innocently.“We could get a bite to eat, you know.”

“Oliver.”

“Maybe have some dessert.Bet they have a killer creme brûlée.”

“ _Ol_ iver.”

“I’m sure Louis the Dancing Queen would be willing to take another spin if you asked nice.”

He stands up, grabs my shoulders tightly, and shoves me against the back of my chair.He leans down to smear his mouth against my ear and slurp my earlobe with a thick swipe of his tongue.“Fuck me, Elio,” he hisses. 

I groan my own name back to him and repeat it twice, a spell cast on our first night together, and we hold tight to each other as we stumble forward, out of the restaurant and towards home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of your fabulous comments are what keep me going. I am absolutely in your debt, but I will shamelessly beg for you to keep them coming. I am addicted to your thoughts!
> 
> Has anyone else noticed how in the film Elio seemed to telegraph his thoughts by staring at Oliver's mouth before attacking it? I just had to bring a bit of that here! :)
> 
> Again, all of my translations are subject to the help of friends, so be kind if they are not exactly correct.


	3. Day 9:  Our Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A music lesson from Elio helps Oliver to see things in a different way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that my tale combines elements of the film and the book; I hope that’s not too bothersome, but I can’t help seeing one in the other. I’ve taken a couple of Aciman’s recognizable lines here and reworked them for my version of his characters.
> 
> I’ve done my best, but I am neither a musician nor a philosopher, merely an admirer of both, so please forgive any liberties I’ve taken here!

“What do you want to do, Elio?”

“Hmm?”

I lift my head up from the grass and look up the hill, over the long strands to where Elio is stretched on his side, head propped up by his right hand while his left spins a stalk of clover in his teeth.

We’ve been lazy this afternoon, wandering earlier down a crescent of Argelès-sur-Mer beachfront near Le Racou that proved too hectic for our mood, the shrieks of children tumbling after kites and soccer balls, their parents barking commands above the muted roar of the waves.We bought lemon ices from a small stand and wandered down the road, crossing over to climb a steep hill that overlooked the bay, leaving its chaos behind in favor of quiet shade.

I’ve felt myself growing apprehensive today.I can see the end of our road trip looming, and the weight of everything that will come after is licking at my brain, nudging me enough to be almost fearful to fall off of that precipice.I have spent too many years as a servant to my failures to dissolve their specters entirely from my subconscious, even with Elio’s reassuring presence.I have no doubts about him; I simply have doubts.The very idea of moving in a new direction totters on the knife-edge of anticipation and anxiety, and as much as I want to start fresh and devote myself to the present, the ghost spots of my solitary self linger in the periphery.I find myself straining to look into a future I cannot see clearly, searching for affirmation in a vacuum of silence, and on some level, it terrifies me.

“Do—for a living, I mean.A career.You’ve never said.”I shrug.“You can do absolutely anything, from what I can tell.So, compose?Perform, maybe?Or teach?”

His face scrunches.“Ummm…yes?”He grins, the clover twitching up into his nose.

I pull a handful of grass and toss it at him. 

“I’m not sure yet, really,” Elio sighs, falling flat onto the ground, wrapping one of the blades around his index finger.“Composition and musicology are interesting to me, history in general.Literature.”He picks up his head.“Somehow I’ve been attracted to philosophy lately.Not sure why.”He winks and flops back down, knees bent, the soles of his feet pushed to the ground.“I’d love to play, maybe my own pieces, or ones I’ve transcribed and adapted.Interpretations.Making something new from something worn.”He is quiet for a few moments.“I’m not sure about teaching, though.”

“Why is that?”

He slaps at a fly.“I’m just…I don’t know.I don’t think I’d really be able to make people understand things, to make an impact or find a way for people to get what they need from me.”

I pull my legs up under me and consider this.Elio is a thinker, a man with a rich inner life, that much is certain.But he is also warm and genuine and insatiably curious, attributes that make his native intelligence irresistible.Of that, I was the living proof.“I disagree.”

He merely glances at me sidelong.

“What?”

He purses his lips and flops his arms at his side.“I—I’m just—I see things _strangely_.I don’t think of music like other people.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s just it!I can’t really explain it right if you’re not in my head.It always comes out wrong.”

“Have you really tried to explain to anyone?”

“Yes…well, no, but...I mean…”A sigh.“I just don’t think my approach would appeal to many people.”

“I think you’re gifted and that you have a lot to share.”

He snorts.“And _I_ think you’re being just nice and trying to make me feel like less of a dork.”

“Oh, now, wait just a minute,”I growl, sliding closer so that I can look down into his face.“First of all, no one in _my_ presence will ever—and I mean _ever—_ refer to you as anything remotely resembling ‘dork,’ and that includes you.” I squeeze his knee joint and press a quick kiss to its edge.“And second, I truly do believe that you can teach anyone who wants to learn.”I sweep my hand up and down his leg and have a sudden thought.

“Teach me, Elio.”

He leans up on his elbows.“Teach you what?”

“Teach me how you find your music.”

He stares at me for a few beats, mind whirring behind the inward curve of his irises, as if trying to gauge my sincerity, determining how far to risk plumbing his own depths.Or maybe he’s just gathering his courage, because then, he bites his lip and looks away, eyes roving over my shoulder to the water and the hills beyond it, glistening in the ambient light.

Finally, his eyes return to mine.“All right, come here.”He hoists up on his knees and points at the space below him.“Face that way.”I flip around and settle into the spot of clover he’s indicated.I feel him inch closer until he is kneeling directly behind me.The heat from his body seeps into my shirt though we don’t touch.

“Look over there—those houses on the hillside.”I stare across the blue, shimmering bay to the collection of white buildings that huddle like awkward party crashers within the steep green interlude between water and sky.“They’re different heights, different widths, but stuck together in a line.The dark windows are dotted around there.Now, close your eyes,” and I do, “and you see them, don’t you? The lines of white, and the way they stand out in different patterns and force your eyes to climb over them, in chunks, or one by one.”His voice is hypnotic, a smooth wave rolling in deep water.“And the windows—they draw your eye simply because there’s nothing there, but you’re waiting for something to appear… Anticipation…It tugs you back to it again and again, but the white fights for it, too, the prominent, the recessed.”He leans his head down so his mouth hovers next to my ear.“That’s the keyboard of my piano.The notes are in my head; I see them there, and they direct me.They pull me up and down the line, make me dig harder for a forte, or step back when they come at me in three dimensions, when the notes themselves push, and I have to retreat in pianissimo.”His voice has tapered.“The music circulates like blood with its own adrenaline, and I drink it.I chase it like a high.And each time I see the scene in my head, it changes.It’s _alive_.”  The last words puff from his throat and linger around me like a fog.

I’ve an inkling sense of vertigo.I hear him inhale and his voice is above my head, a murmur that makes me feel loose, unbound.“Open your eyes,” and my lids obey, “and look at the umbrellas on the beach.”The scoop of sand snug to the water has a pastel rainbow of colored dots shading the tourists from the midday sun.“Random points, just meaningless sound, right?But when you close your eyes,” as I do, “they shape into notes, a song, that becomes their own voice when they find their way into staff lines.It’s like letters that arrange and rearrange to create a language, and their words and stories are mine to tell.”

There have been many times in the night when we connect, Elio and I, when he slides deep inside of me, to my very core, and I can feel his pulse, his breathing, his pleasure and his pain.I can look into his eyes and see worlds, a universe of wonder in the greens and browns and golds that lay me bare, an addict to the smooth motion of his hips, the sharp clench of his fingers with mine, the pained bliss that ripples across his face when he reaches his apex and falls slowly to earth.I cannot hold myself back then; I am powerless to resist any longer.He pulls me with him, and I follow, willingly, blindly.He rules my senses, and I break into pieces beneath him, around him, begging him to take what he needs and leave the rest behind as dust, for only what _he_ needs is what I covet within myself.

This is every bit as intense.I feel like I’m flying, above yet a part, merging with Elio among the clouds, filled with him in a way I’d never imagined.It’s euphoric.I’m drowning in his heart and his mind, looking out at the world from the platform of his artistry, his nucleus.I am the firing of his neurons; I’ve become the visions in his brain.I’d never known this was possible.It takes me to a realm I never shared with anyone in my life before.

“Close your eyes and hold up your hand.”A small object tickles my palm.“Feel that and tell me what you see.”

I work my fingertips gently up and down.“Silky…tapered…lots of pockets…small grains…” is the husky reply.It barely sounds like my voice.

Elio hums his agreement.“To me, that feels like a capriccio, a dance with its quick turns and small motifs, direct but faceted, that sort of mixture of real and imaginary figures.It’s a rush.”

I open my eyes to the top of a magenta wildflower.“It’s beautiful.”

“That color is pretty uncommon.It dictates the mood of the piece.”

“Cheerful?”

He huffs a laugh and bends close to my ear.“Naughty.”

“How do you know?”

“Know what?”

“What is music and what is just noise?”

He cups my hand and closes my fingers around the flower.“This is music.”My other hand he pulls to the ground, to a bare spot in the grass, then pushes it in the stiff, flat dirt.“That’s noise.”I twist around to see his face, and he shrugs.“If it talks to me, if it makes enough of an impression, it’s music.It translates.We…negotiate an understanding.If it stays babble, it’s noise.”

I stare at him.The planet has just shifted on its axis, and he flops back in the grass and scratches his nose like he’s not responsible for its revolution, and I can only stare at him with dumb awe.

It’s like a conjuring trick.

I look at Elio one moment, and I think I have it figured out.I think I know who he is and what I am.And then he pivots; he does something perfectly ordinary, like flick the hair from his eyes and smile, and suddenly everything is different, and what I thought I knew is thrown into chaos.

I’ve never in my life understood Heraclitus better than at this very moment.The only constant is change, in fits and starts on a geologic scale, oblivious to our ability to recognize it.Elio has proven to me that every moment is a space of ribbon that we’ve been allotted, one that binds us closer, that redefines my universe in minute ways that I could never have imagined but could never again live without.My love for Elio is complete, yet it constantly evolves because he does.But in the end, it’s because _I_ change, for Elio is a true virtuoso who molds me as he casually turns his entire world into his own work of art.

“I understand,” I tell him slowly.“Music is organic.It is...present.It’s an emotion, or a spectrum of them—it’s an abstraction that is, at once, palpable.”

“Yeah.”He tilts his head. “‘A coalescence,’ my father would call it.It exists everywhere.That’s why I think of music as the true universal language, not mathematics.Music _is_ mathematics, to some degree, but it integrates all the senses, at least for me.”

I press my lips to the inside of his wrist and cradle his left hand him in my lap “And now for me, too.”I move a lock of hair from his forehead.“Thank you, Elio.”

A smile emerges— _our smile—_ accentuated by the heavy-lidded nature of the downcast eyes which scan my face.As if I weren’t already hopelessly gone on him.He gives a quick squeeze to my hand in his.“Must be why they included a sample of music on Voyager—the Golden Record.”

“Which included Bach, right?So now he dances among the stars.”

“ _Andromeda_ capriccio?”

“In the key of B-flat major.”

A nudge.The smile expands.

I rotate on my hip to lay down next to him without having to release his hand.I stare up at the sky as it appears in arpeggios of random blue shapes behind the leaf-lacing silhouettes in the fugue of branches of the tree.I roll onto my side, and he meets me in the middle.   Now when I close my eyes, I do not see the shadows in the corner; instead, I see him, vividly: the flush of his skin, the fan of his eyelashes across his cheek, the bones of his hand as he raises it to my hair.I take his lower lip between mine, savor it, breathe in his dark-timbre sigh, let his tongue circle mine as the sea air ruffles his curls across my temple.Of its own volition, my leg hooks over him, my unused hand clenching the bend of his waist. 

Nature has cunning ways of finding our sweetest spots, the tipping points that take us beyond the outer rim and let us hold the cheek of something divine.It’s like dream-making, a strange remembrance of a time yet to come.

And, right now, it makes an absurd amount of sense to me.

I could spend the rest of my life like this:with him, on a hill over the sea, my eyes totally shut, one leg coiled around his.It is a layered perfection that I will see in some form every night through the pitch blackness and hear clearly through the silence in my dreams—us, here, tonal and private and sensual. _Chamber music, appassionato_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I know, Bach actually has three pieces on the Golden Record, though “Capriccio in B-flat major” (what Elio plays in the film) is not one of them.
> 
> In the film, I love the many facial expressions of Mr. Chalamet as he plays the different versions of Bach; they partially inspired my take on how Elio views music in relation to the world around him.


	4. Day 15: The End of the Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the last day of the trip, but the boys are not quite prepared for it to end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, I really have taken on Armie Hammer as my Oliver, in appearance and personality; after watching him in multiple interviews, he seems the type who has that veneer of humor and affability as his shield, something I recognize easily as it is my own way of existing. It’s the physics of human beings that the crustier the exterior, the softer the interior. Mr. Hammer apparently explores his heart through acting; I have chosen fiction as my medium.

The wind from the open windows creates a low howl, muffling the reedy chirp of cicadas from the surrounding fields.The car engine buzzes and lowers in pitch as I shift the gears.I glance over at Elio slouched in his seat with his feet on the dash, fingers knotted together over behind his head.He’s barely said a word this morning.We’d packed up the Fiat in companionable silence, moving around each other with a practiced fluidity as we stuffed our bags in next to the mounting pile of packages of our various acquisitions, preparing to leave our final stop outside of Genoa and make our way back to the villa in B.We planned to stay there for another week before we’d head to New York, and the Perlmans would visit in mid June before their new research candidate was due to arrive in Italy for the remainder of the summer.

I had paused before I got in and studied him across the roof of the car.“You all right?”

Elio had given me a closed-lip smile and nodded, slipping wordlessly into the passenger seat and snapping his door closed with a muted clunk.

When we are about ten miles out, he throws his feet down and pops up.“Turn here.”

“Huh?”

He reaches over and pats my upper arm, gaze intent on the approaching side road.“Here.Turn left.”He points at the brown sign announcing the name of a small parco comunale.

I steer the car down the road he’s requested, little more than a dirt path that leads to a small parking area inside a grove of trees.No other cars are there.There is a small stream that gurgles its way through the property, one of the many fed by the distant Alps.I coast into a spot in the shade and cut the engine.

Elio lolls his arm out the window and takes a deep breath.

I wait for a few minutes to see what he will do.His posture is relaxed, yet his body seems tense, pensive. _What is it, Elio?What’s going on in that brain of yours?Tell me what you’re thinking._

He shrugs one shoulder.“I just…”He meets my eyes sheepishly.“I didn’t want it to end yet, you know?”He gives me the same closed smile as before, and my heart clenches a little bit in my chest.It was the kind of smile one gives to say goodbye, one of sadness or loss.

I get it—I really do.We’ve been in a bubble, he and I.Two blissful weeks of being wrapped in one another without obligations to anyone or anything else.We had been the only two people in the world, dancing with one another on a sun-soaked landscape of paradise, imprinting a stream of memories into my heart that I will hold tight to me long after I perish from this world.

“My parents used to bring me to this park when I was little,” he says, eyes roving over the area through the windshield.“There used to be ducks who would nest here in the spring, and when we’d be in town for Passover, I would make them bring me here so that I could feed them.”

“Ducks?”

His neck is cricked slightly as he digs inward to pull out the memory.“Then, the spring I was eight, the ducks weren’t here.They never showed, and it’s like they _knew_ because later that summer, the park burned.A lightning strike split a tree and sparked the dry grass.”He chuckles and wipes his nose.“I cried so hard.But my dad told me that it was nature’s way.‘You’ll see,’ he said, ‘in ten years this will all be new again.’”His lips quirk.“I should have known he’d be right."

I reach over and squeeze his leg, an unspoken reassurance, then settle back and prop my knees up around the steering wheel.For a while, we stay like that, listening to the swish of the tree limbs and chirped exchanges of the birds living in their midst.

“I wanted to tell you for a long time,” Elio says suddenly, making me jump a bit.He clears his throat.“Last summer, I mean…a _very_ long time.” 

“Tell me what?”

“That I…”His face is turned toward the window so I cannot see his expression.His finger picks at the metal of the door frame.“That you’d fascinated me, that you were the most interesting person I’d ever talked to.That I could never get you out of my mind.”His left arm crosses absently in front of his chest and drops to his lap.“I always felt like such a stupid kid around you, I…I never thought you’d ever feel the same about me, that you’d ever…even notice me.”

“’Stupid kid’? _You_?”I huff a laugh.“Elio, it is a tribute to your character that you would even entertain the notion that…”I sigh.“I’m quite certain you’ve never been either of those things.”I shake my head and let it rest on the small restraint.This is the man who has captivated me since I first met his eyes and saw his playful smirk, since I’d marveled over his focus and self-possession, since I noticed that his learned father, a man of some renown, spoke to him about topics that matter and listened—truly _listened_ —to his responses.“You intimidated me.”

He just chuckles.

“It’s the truth, Elio!Everything seems to come so easy to you.” 

“Stop it, Oliver.”His voice is gruff, as if he thinks I’m teasing him.Or is it that he finally realizes I’m not?

I reach out for his hand and rub his palm over the top of my leg, feeling his fingers bump lightly back and forth over the hem of my shorts.“You’re handsome, funny…had half the girls in town drooling over you.You’re a genius, ridiculously talented…well-read…” 

I watch a hawk float high on the humid air.For no reason, I think of my Uncle Ken.He lived in Seminole, Florida and owned a ship charter business on Tampa Bay.I used to visit two weeks of the summer in my early teens to escape Connecticut and help him out, my only chance to spend some time on the water.He would dress me up in a bright polo shirt and white shorts, hair combed back neatly, and make me salute to the tourists on the dock.“You’re a good lookin’ kid, Ollie.Like a regular movie star!That’s all you need in this life.That’ll always get you places, just you remember that!”I did, too.I remembered standing on deck, rolling up lengths of rope around my arm so that the girls would tug their parents over to where we were; he’d fluff up my hair, bleached blonder by the ubiquitous sun, and let them stare at me like a zoo animal.I remembered that no one ever spoke to me about weather fronts or marine life or knot-tying on naval ships of old; no one even wanted to know my name.Instead, they’d smile at me and compliment my blue eyes and strong chin.I grew to despise the phrase “all-American boy.”

I knew my uncle never meant any harm.He probably thought that the experience would build my confidence.But all it did was to make me fold inward; the more they stared, the more I felt invisible.I was merely a curiosity at which to gawk.A billboard.Who I really was never mattered, so I ended up feeling like that’s _all_ I was—a two-dimensional facade who was only pretending to have any depth, like I was a lie, all the way down to my non-existent core.

For my whole life since then, I’ve been looked at plenty, but never really _seen_.I made sure of it.I made an art of the affable small talk and one-liners that would allow me to work a room from one end to the other without having to stand in one spot the entire time I was there.I never let myself get trapped by exposition, never allowed anyone to probe too deep or know too much; there was no conversation I couldn’t win with a self-deprecating remark and a large grin to counter it, spinning out the door with an offhanded, “Later!”I was happy to play the gilded peacock.It allowed me privacy, anonymity.

Gradually, it became my survival tool, the ultimate in self-protection.No one knew me so no one could affect me; no one could hurt me.Bravado was my favorite outfit, and I wore it everywhere I went—job interviews, dates, classes.Very quickly, I discovered that my uncle was right.I looked the part, and it got me what everyone else wanted.And the more I advanced, the more desperate I became, the more separated I felt from the person I wanted to be, needed to be, before I ceased to exist at all in any form.

Prior to coming to Italy last year, I could feel that I was nearing my end.I could hear the screaming from a distant room in my mind.I’d have been grateful to silence that voice for good than listen to the torture of it for a lifetime more, believing truly that there could be no answer to its pleas.Getting on that plane felt like striking my last match—I’d either start a fire or freeze to death.

Maybe someday I’ll tell Elio that he saved me, literally and figuratively, in every way possible; that the Perlmans and their peaceful estate and their easy, genuine love of ideas and language and music, of me, was the life raft I had sought in the bleak ocean in which I’d been adrift.Perhaps I can find a way to say it all so that I won’t break down into a puddle of sloppy tears and fitful sobs, so that he will understand without being afraid or worried or sad.

Someday.

Someday, I will surrender to him totally.

But today, I scoop up his hand, lace my fingers with his and squeeze tightly, marvel at how it fits into mine perfectly, wonder sincerely how my hand felt before I held it, contemplate if I there was a time I genuinely felt anything before Elio.

“I never wanted to be the guy that just _wants_ ,” Elio says distantly.“That pathetic guy who sees it all, sees exactly what he wants right in front of him, but he thinks too hard and ends up watching it drift past him without speaking a word.I wanted to be able to actually _do_ , to _act_ , even though I was scared to death.”He turns to me then.“That’s what you’ve given to me, Oliver.You give me the courage to act, just you being here…loving me…it makes all the rest open up.”His features soften in a shy, lopsided smile.As if I might tease him or deny him.As if I could ever spurn him or resist him in any way.

I open my mouth to reply and choke as my throat closes.I blink rapidly, feeling my eyes swell with tears.“You—you, too, Elio.All of it…you’ve no idea,” I husk out, gripping his hand even tighter, my knuckles white from the strain.

Elio exhales hard and rolls his body away from the passenger door and vaults over the gearshift.He falls into my lap facing me, knees pushed on either side of my seat, nearly touching the back seat in the tiny car.He releases my hand to gather me up. I let him pull me into him, clutching at my back, working his fists down my spine until I have adhered to him, face pressed into the bend of his neck, the point of my nose fitting exactly into to the indentation at the base of his skull.

I breathe out.

My arms fall low, beneath his raised body.I pull him forward and he clicks down as his legs slip on either side of me and allow him to fall truly into my lap, but the angle tugs at his torso and threatens to pull him away.

I breathe in.

His hands grasp bunches of my shirt.Mine do the same to him.Our bodies and our will are the only things holding us together.

I breathe out.

“Thank you for this time, Oliver.For this trip.”

I breathe in.

“It’s the best time I’ve had in my whole life.”A whisper.

I breathe out.

“Thank you for coming back.”A secret.

I breathe in.

“Thank you for not giving up on me.”

I breathe out.

I have a million words for him.They’re smashed up against the underside of my tongue.They swim in the folds of my brain and prickle the inside of my forehead and force out rivers through the openings of my eyes and nose.I know they will find their way out in the days and years to come:When Elio is perched in the window of my apartment— _our_ apartment—finishing a cigarette, one leg bent to the sill, hair mussed from sleep; when he’s hunched over his desk reading Tolstoy or Hawking or Edwin Gordon until the night lightens to dawn; when he brings me coffee and kisses my temple as I chip away at a stack of research papers; when he hops out of the stairwell to the subway and spots me waiting at the corner, and a grin overtakes his face, like we hadn’t just seen each other hours before; when he plays his guitar all night as an endless soft lullaby when I have the flu and my fever won’t let me rest; when he rolls on top of me in the middle of the night, still half asleep, and bites at my neck, moaning his own name into my ear.

Now, I breathe in and hold his air inside my lungs.For just a few minutes more, I hold all of him there—my whole world, balanced on the expanse of my thighs.

Eventually, his arms work their way back up to my shoulders, and he leans against the steering wheel to look into my face.He’s beautiful, torn exquisitely between happiness and melancholy, exhaustion and suspense.His mouth is ajar, the line of his eyebrows angling up, cheeks pink.I skim my thumb across his collarbone.“What time are your parents expecting us?”

“I told them we’d be in before dinner.”

“How about we take a walk, then?Go around the park, see what you remember?”

His eyes are damp, and his face cinches minutely on one side.“Yeah, I’d like that.”

We unfold ourselves from the car, joints cracking, and head for the trail, a dirt line into the trees carpeted in mulched wood chips.We climb the small hill and descend to the edge of the stream. Elio doesn’t say much.He stays close, hand brushing mine as we walk.We are peppered with explosions of cool shade and sudden heat in the exposed spots, but the air is fragrant and sublime, fed by the azaleas and honeysuckle that grow wild in the alcoves of the meadow.We scoop handfuls of water from the stream to drink and cool our skin, then follow its curving passage back to where we’d started.

As we tromp over to the car, I nudge Elio with my shoulder.“Well?”

“What?”

I raise my palms and gesture randomly around me.“Come on, what’s the verdict?How does it compare now to how it was before?”

He stops and stares at me, watches me round to the other side of the car.I pause and raise my eyebrows when I realize he’s not moved.“Elio?”

_The smile_.“It’s better,” he finally murmurs.“So much better than I’d ever thought it could be.”

_Oh, my dear lord_ —

I couldn’t possibly agree more.

He flings open the door and dives in to start the car. “Andiamo, Americano!”He revs the spluttering engine.“Ho fame!”

I roll my eyes and bite my bottom lip in a pointless effort to keep my heart from exploding in my chest.I drop in next to him and settle back to let Elio take us home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot tell you how glad I am that you’ve read this part of their journey! I have loved getting to know Oliver (and Elio) better, so I definitely will be continuing this series. If you’ve enjoyed their story so far, I would be thrilled if you’d come back and read some more!
> 
> Also, I get an embarrassing amount of joy from your feedback—nothing about the story feels complete until I can find out how it was received by an audience. Have mercy on my pathetic soul and tell me what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> I mean it when I say that your comments are my lifeblood--PLEASE tell me what you think!


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